took the Government away. We stuffed ballot boxes. We
shot them. We are not ashamed of it. The Senator from Wisconsin
would have done the same thing. I see it in his eye right
now. He would have done it. With that system--force, tissue
ballots, etc.--we got tired ourselves. So we called a Constitutional
Convention, and we eliminated, as I said, all of the colored
people whom we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

"I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that
has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans;
to remind you, gentlemen of the North, that your slogans of
the past--brotherhood of man and fatherhood of God--have gone
glimmering down the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no
longer, because you shoot negroes in Illinois, when they come
in competition with your labor, and we shoot them in South
Carolina, when they come in competition with us in the matter
of elections. You do not love them any better than we do.
You used to pretend that you did; but you no longer pretend
it, except to get their votes.

"You deal with the Filipinos just as you deal with the negroes,
only you treat them a heap worse."

No Democrat rose to deny his statement, and, so far as I know,
no Democratic paper contradicted it. The Republicans, who
had elected President Harrison and a Republican House in 1888,
were agreed, with very few exceptions, as to the duty of providing
a remedy for this great wrong. Their Presidential Convention,
held at Chicago in 1888, passed a resolution demanding, "effective
legislation to secure integrity and purity of elections, which
are the fountains of all public authority," and charged that
the "present Administration and the Democratic majority in
Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot
by a criminal nullification of the Constitution and the laws
of the United States."

In the Senate at the winter session of 1888 and at the beginning
of the December session of 1889, a good many Bills were introduced
for the security of National elections. Similar Bills were
introduced in the House. A special Committee was appointed
there to deal with that subject. I had, myself, no doubt
of the Constitutional authority of Congress, and of its duty,
if it were able, to pass an effective law for that purpose.

I was the Chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections,
and it was my duty to give special attention to that subject.
I h